Owen Paterson, the new secretary of state for the environment – from badger-lover to badger-culler? Photograph: Peter Morrison/AP/GNM Imaging

The little orphaned badgers Bessie and Baz, one-time pets of the new environment secretary, Owen Paterson, are enjoying a surprising posthumous fame thanks to his new role overseeing the imminent cull in England, which could result in a third of the population being shot dead. "I was perhaps about 10 years old when a local farmer rang us up to say he had found a young badger and would we take it in," Paterson reminisced in 2004. "So we did; it was a female called Bessy and she lived in the boiler room. She was extremely intelligent, had a very low opinion of cats but loved the dogs. She was pretty well trained, she went in the car. Then we had another badger and as soon as they got together they dug their way out and ran away. It is terribly hard when welfare people see me as anti-badger, having known a badger very well."

Yet Paterson is standing resolutely behind the cull, dismissing opposition as "sad sentimentality" at this week's Conservative party conference. It is an issue he knows well having tabled a record 600 parliamentary questions on the problem of TB in cattle while shadow environment minister. That barrage is typical of the man, say those who know him, pointing to similar deep dives by Paterson into fisheries, roads and Northern Ireland. "He is very committed, very diligent, thorough and good on detail and he is incredibly energetic," said Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conservative MP and a fellow member of the rightwing Cornerstone group.

Paterson is Shropshire born-and-bred. The arrival of a true countryman – who derides "metropolitan smartypants" and says "we have to manage the countryside" – at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) might have been expected to please many of those who care about the environment. In what some may call a display of his "good, old-fashioned, Shropshire common sense", he is said to have forbidden Defra officials from using the phrase "ecosystem services", a jargon phrase for the benefits bestowed by the natural world.

But the overwhelming reaction from environmentalists – farmers and landowners excepted – was of horror. Instead of a countryman, they saw an apparent climate change sceptic, confirmed Eurosceptic and avowed slasher of red tape. His appointment to the ministry entrusted with enforcing the regulation – much of it from Brussels – that protects the environment was seen as the final confirmation that David Cameron's pledge to be the "greenest government ever" had gone up in smoke, as the party shifted to the right.

Paterson is certainly a true-blue Tory, railing, for example, against red tape in a recent Spectator interview: "Government can wreck a business by confiscating its money by taxation. But confiscating its time is absolutely critical too." When officials in his new department were highlighting the difficulty of ignoring European environmental regulation, he is said to have told them: "The French get away with it."

But, given his new post, the most damaging charge is that he is a climate change sceptic. The suggestion is based on his opposition to "ridiculous", "useless" windfarms, "intensely unpopular" subsidies for renewable energy and his support for new runways and shale gas development, known as fracking. His performances at conference only hardened this view, with rabid denunciations of "Soviet" subsidies and threats to cut them, alongside enthusiasm for the fast tracking of fracking. However, Richard Betts, a meteorologist at the Met Office who heard Paterson's inaugural speech to staff at Defra, concluded he was no climate change denier.

Nonetheless, Paterson has perplexingly chosen not to scotch the charge. "Climate change is obviously happening and there is obviously a man-made contribution," he has said more than once. Failing to state that the burning of fossil fuels is by far the greatest contribution is a fudge frequently used by so-called sceptics: hence the greens' fears.

For them, it gets worse. For a man frequently lauded for his intelligence and grip of detail, he can still peddle myths, stating in September: "My concern is that some measures we take to [reduce carbon emissions] may be doing more damage. I am not convinced that building windfarms is the right way because you have more problems. You have to have gas backup – and that is operating inefficiently. So you have the problems that it's not reducing carbon emissions and it depends on very heavy public subsidy which is intensely unpopular with the people and businesses it damages."

Paterson's loathing of windfarms may be out of kilter with national opinion, but it is firmly in step with his North Shropshire constituents. He is well-thought of there, according to Keith Harrison, editor of the Shropshire Star, and has increased his majority at four successive general elections, perhaps because he is the very model of a shires Tory MP.

Brought up on a family farm and described as "county set" rather than grand, he went to Radley College, a public school, and studied history at Cambridge. Two decades followed in the family tannery business, supplying leather to luxury goods makers, and a time as president of the European Tanners Confederation, where he deployed his fluent French and German. "He is no stupid little Englander," said Phillip Blond, director of the ResPublica thinktank and influential Tory moderniser.

Paterson now lives in a large, 160-year-old, Grade II listed house a stone's throw from the Welsh border, where he keeps horses, sheep and chickens. He is married to the daughter of Viscount Matthew Ridley, linking him both to eight generations of Tory MPs and the prominent climate change sceptic Matt Ridley, his brother-in-law.

Paterson's plan for protecting the UK's seas from overfishing was widely praised by environmentalists as "having its heart in the right place", but was founded on an impossible unilateral withdrawal from the European Union's fisheries policy. His first appearance on the BBC's Farming Today programme as environment secretary revealed an unexpected zeal for closing the UK's "dessert deficit". He said: "One thing I have been banging on about, we have a dessert deficit in the UK. We still import a very large proportion of our desserts. I would ask everyone to go out and buy a British dessert."

His energy showed as shadow Northern Ireland secretary, when he is said to have spent more time in the province than the secretary of state. Yet, despite being seen as a low-profile success when he served as Northern Ireland secretary after the 2010 election, he did propose that Sinn Féin MPs should be allowed to swear a pledge of allegiance not involving the Queen, an "undoubtedly naive" idea, according to seasoned observers.

Coming out of the Northern Ireland post relatively unscathed is an achievement, according to Rees-Mogg: "It is a very difficult brief to have and requires people to be pragmatic and get on with people with different opinions. Going in as a headbanging ideologue would be a very bad idea."

Blond also defends Paterson: "There has been a rush to judgment on Owen that has not been merited. I know Owen is very keen on community energy, for example." The official transcript of his conference speech demonstrates the limit of that keeness for renewables though: "We must ensure that the right measures are deployed in the right places" – ie not wind in Shropshire.

Jonathan Porritt, one of the UK's most prominent environmentalists, greeted his appointment by saying: "Sit back and enjoy the spectacle of Owen Paterson as secretary of state at Defra, who is as close to a latter-day reincarnation of [the Thatcherite environment secretary] Nicholas Ridley as we're likely to get. It really is astonishing to contemplate what was once a progressive and intelligent [Conservative] party so comprehensively engineering its own destruction."

Paterson has so far simply ignored such criticism, instead focusing on his government's central obsession: reviving economic growth. "My absolute priority, with clear instruction from the prime minister, is to do everything I can to improve and help conditions under which people can run businesses and generate wealth and jobs in the rural economy," said Paterson. "The role of Defra is to make things easier for [rural] people and then to get out of people's hair."

David Nussbaum, the head of WWF, whom Paterson phoned within days of taking office, warned: "He has to engage in rural affairs, but his department has national responsibilities and international responsibilities too."

For greens, this is the key. Improving the daily business of the countryside appears suited to Paterson. But on the broader issues of environment, energy and climate change, both as environment secretary and as a member of a government left distinctly less green after the reshuffle, the more he says, the more sceptical he appears. Greens fear that just as Paterson, an avowed badger-lover, has backed the widespread slaughter of the animals, the avowed lover of the countryside will fail to back the measures most experts say are needed to protect the world from global warming.

Pocket profile

Born: 24 June 1956

Age: 56

Career: Paterson is a countryman raised on a farm who, after public school and Cambridge, spent 20 years in the family leather firm before becoming the very model of a true-blue Conservative MP in the shires.

High point: Promotion to secretary of state for the environment, where he can apply his fierce Euroscepticism and loathing of red tape to getting Defra "out of people's hair".

Low point: Probably yet to come with the hugely controversial badger cull about to start and flooding on the rise at a time when Defra has cut the spending on flood defences.

What he says: "We always had very well-intentioned Labour ministers at Defra who were completely urban and completely clueless. That's not going to happen with me. And I eat meat."

What they say: "He listens and is bright, so he's easy to brief, but is more gung-ho than his predecessor. The badger cull is his first huge test: when political dogma is confronted by scientific fact and public opinion, that means tough times ahead." Defra source